~ “I hope we once again have reminded people that man is not free unless government is limited. There’s a clear cause and effect here that is as neat and predictable as a law of physics: as government expands, liberty contracts.” Ronald Reagan.

“It was a cold day in April, and the clocks were striking thirteen.” Thus began George Orwell’s prophetic novel, 1984, written forty years earlier, preparing the reader for a dystopian future under socialism – a society of great suffering and injustice, and bereft of reason. This symbol of the thirteenth stroke brings into question what transpired through all the previous twelve hours, when inhumanity triumphed over our society, destroying our time and history itself.

In Orwell’s tale, words were constantly being removed from the language and history repeatedly revised so that the citizens could no longer formulate thoughts. The character, Winston Smith, explains, “He who controls the past, controls the future. He who controls the present controls the past.” We live in similar times, perhaps not as dramatically, but certainly equally disturbing. We are witness to ongoing destruction of our vocabulary, disintegration of the family unit, isolation and disorientation of the individual, demolition of historic monuments, whitewashed history, and a tampering of time, all combining to extinguish and remake our society. The focus of this diminished schooling and re-education is our young.

“British schools are removing analog clocks from exam halls because kids can’t read them,” reported Paul Bois, in the Daily Wire, April 2, 2019, with the subheading, “Many educators are phasing out analog clocks…” Rather than teach the kids to read the time, the educators are removing the clocks; this is happening in the US, as well. An emailed message from a teacher in the US read, “I get fifth graders asking me what time it is; there are two clocks in my classroom.” Where are the parents? And why can’t this teacher with two clocks set aside five minutes a day to teach what should have been taught in Kindergarten?

Studies have shown that being able to tell time on an analog clock is good for the brain and the mind. It enhances the children’s cognitive and creative skills and helps them to visualize and learn time management – to understand the passage of time and how much time is left to complete a task. It boosts their abilities to solve complex mathematical manipulations, with increments and fractions comparable to similar concepts in other activities – even to grasp and learn map direction. Of course, the academics and psychologists are aware, yet the regression continues as we move closer to thirteen o’clock.

Another methodical and consistent destruction to our children’s conceptualization, creativity, and ability to work through and solve problems is the removal of cursive writing from the curriculum. Suzanne Baruch Asherson, occupational therapist, wrote in the New York Times (April 13, 2013), “Putting pen to paper stimulates the brain like nothing else.” It stimulates brain synapses and synchronicity between the left and right hemispheres, leading to increased comprehension, expression, critical thinking, working memory, and higher SAT scores – skills not achieved from printing and typing[…]

During a recent speech given at Intellectual Takeout’s Spring Gala, author Charles Murray recalled a conversation he had with his daughter just over 10 years ago, when she was a student at Middlebury College. At that time, Murray asked his daughter if she had been able to determine the political leanings of her professors. His daughter answered in the negative, a fact which surprised Murray, particularly since his daughter was quite astute when it came to picking up political cues.

As almost anyone would recognize, things have changed, and politics are becoming a regular feature of the classroom.

That last fact was addressed over the weekend by Finnegan Schick, a senior majoring in English at Yale University, in an article for Heterodox Academy. According to Schick, the level of partisan politics in the classroom has become all-consuming since the election of Trump – even to the point that normal class topics are being forgotten in the process:

“Universities — once characterized by a detachment from overt partisanship — have become hotbeds of anti-Trump ‘resistance.’ In one sense, then, Trump’s America really is ‘victimizing’ students and faculty, insofar as academics has taken a backseat to politics. The real victim of Trump’s presidency may turn out to be a generation of adults whose liberal arts educations were hijacked by political debate.”

Schick goes on to assure readers that his beef with this new trend does not stem from his own political leanings. He, in fact, is a progressive who supported Hillary Clinton in the last election. Yet in spite of this support, Schick recognizes that it’s not helping him grow in knowledge as an English major if every class is fixated on a dislike of Trump:

“Literature is ideally a way of broadening our social imaginations. If authors are only worth reading insofar as they inform modern phenomena, then the entire English canon is of mere antiquarian interest and can be summarily dismissed.

Classrooms need not be purged of politics altogether. That’s neither possible nor desirable. But professors must recognize the line between timeless political insights and rank partisanship. Politics in the classroom can also be a distraction from the syllabi and the space built into the curriculum for contextualizing historic sources with contemporary situations.”

It’s easy to look at this situation and conclude that it’s been caused by the new political era which Trump ushered in. But is there something deeper at work?

In his 1987 book, The Closing of the American Mind, the late University of Chicago professor Allan Bloom noted that college students were not receiving training in the core principles and ideas which have prevailed throughout history. Instead, he explained, they were being indoctrinated into a curriculum which focuses on popular societal trends and provides relatively little substance and depth of thought.

Is it possible that the highly-politicized university is the outgrowth of such a scenario? Have recent generations been trained to focus so much on relevancy that they can no longer think beyond current trends of race, class, gender, and other politicized issues? And as a result, have we created the political classroom beast which even progressive students are beginning to find tiresome and narrow-minded?

I had intended to do a section on the Left’s War-Gaming of the Academy, but have incorporated it here as that marries up well with what people can do to combat them when (not if) they cross the line from legal peaceful protest to criminal behavior.

With violence in mind, you can’t fully appreciate what this victory means in terms of removing a whole battery of authoritarian options from the Left, as part of a worldwide arrangement they believed they would seal in November.

For one, as we continue to pinch ourselves just to be reminded, we’re now up on the horses and they’re down there, afoot. Therefore their police and para-military will not be able to ride us down and shuttle us into corrals as originally mapped out. They still may be able to snoop on us, but no longer under the color of law. Nor will there be any midnight Elian Gonzalez-style raids with SWAT teams.

This isn’t a done deal, though. We could still lose. But by the numbers, we should win going away.

So I really like our chances, if we continue to play our cards right.

You see, the role of the stay-at-home citizen isn’t done. Not by a damned sight. In fact, it’s only beginning, for while we can begin to use government to bottle up the more criminal aspects of the Left’s resistance, there is much we can do at the grass roots to blight their path, hastening the day they will give up their criminal ways and go back to sucking their thumbs.

First, keep the faith, by letting the President know you haven’t abandoned him. And let your elected representatives know you demand no less loyalty from them. Trust me, most Republicans still think this is just a political game, even as it ratchets up in violence. Most of them still don’t get it[…]